Disgustipated

This writing is in severe disrepair. After months, literally, of thinking about it, I voiced some concerns to my girlfriend and we had a good conversation about the relationship. Sometimes its hard to talk about the relationship. Usually the sex roles are reversed with regard to feelings of urgency. I cant take the pressure though. Its hard to set the right level of how much things count in my life. I mean each individual thing that I attend is given a level of importance, figuratively. And then I overreact if I cant stop thinking about something. Its a desire to be quelled mostly but it also sets me apart from my competition sometimes. Once in a while that is helpful.

So the lady understands my point of view. We are a couple.

My housing situation is a bitch, and it is sometimes useful to think about it, but I havent come up with any really good plans. We implement the same plan and refine it. Posting on CL to get people in there. Poor sell. Just going to keep trying.

Im hot in the lab again. In a new building even. Today I rearranged the hot room to my liking. In a larger lab there will always be one or two people giving me shit about how I move stuff. Its somehow natural. I dont take it the wrong way, but usually I care more about the placement and win out. Because people use different things in a lab over time, the environment is always changing. Because labwork is so damn hard, I take positioning of devices pretty seriously. I have almost agreed to lock the hot room at all times. That shits wak though, never did that in the old building. The hots are locked in the fridge. Im walking in and out of here people, stay out the way with your locked doors. That key will sit on top of that fridge. Nicely.

The second to most recent new postdoc told us at labmeeting yesterday that she is done. She has an announcement to make after we all dont make any. Donesies. One year in the lab, enough time to stay off my radar and learn some techniques in a new organism. She helped me believe in a field, which now I am committed to.

I am committed to being interested and running experiments in it. I just cant read the data yet. Literally. Learning python to get my data to work with software created in another lab. They have been vetted by a Vanity journal. They implement Python. Our system is draconian, you could say.

Ok not draconian. In the basement somewhere there is one of the first devices made for this research in the 70s or something. I should take a picture before it gets tossed. Im busy hoarding things from another defunked lab at school. Far too much cool and historical and useful items laying around waiting to be incinerated like the Yale trash. Our instruments are at least from the last decade.

I find some relief in the notion that the murderer of Annie Le in New Haven is being brought to justice. The lesson that I take from the situation is that the situation, at large, is pretty fucked. The wreckless chaos that results without a positive social framework pears through a thin viel at us. The timing of it all. Too much. I never like Yale. No offence, but shit, Kerry and Bush from there, the same fraternity? Bad deal. Anyway the point is, remember to protect you and yours from the insanity. Not being Oxygen deprived and stuffed somewhere, but from the active malformations of Americans. Some of them, like some of most civilized societies that I know of, are just bad. Malevolent because of what happened to them, developmentally or otherwise. Enough on this.

So Im gonna write more about science. We loose one postdoc, we have ordered another China-direct, is the rumor. Sounds good to me, hopefully they work on this same field. Hopefully they do molecular biology. Hopefully they speak some English.

I am a fifth year, I recently spoke with a sixth-year friend and he is having trouble getting postdoc interviews. He says start early. I, unlike him, have no strange project in mind that I want to pursue in someones lab. I think I will go with the mentors ideas at least to start with. So I am thinking about new jobs, and talking to my girlfriend about how that means she has to chill, be easy, not be too intense about this relationship. This can be looked down upon, and I am substantially older than she. So it can be looked even more down upon. I believe that people just have to decide for themselves. If she likes how this goes, then we go out. I like how it goes unless I feel like she is getting too into it. the L word. The family talk. yada-etc.

So it occured to me today that the person I want to work for hasnt made it really onto the scene yet. Follow me on this. The best paper that a person makes at the early stage of their carreer is at the end of thier grad or postdoc work. Then if they hit, they make good money and get lots of people jobs. They create feilds. Jobs are the true measure of succeess in my mind. You make them or you do not grow from cottage operation to major industrial undertakings. Thats what I want to do.

Its hard to believe that I could find the best Postdoc PI in this geographical area. The decision is not easy and will be made slowly as I continue to think about it.

So someone works hard, gets a manuscript out and obtains a job. I mean, not counting when someone is powerful enough just to plop their postdocs about the world, funded, and its easy to get people out of the lab. The postdoc makes the paper. I mean not counting when the PI is powerful enough to get the paper made without much haggling, and the postdoc is not simply being hired at a new institution because of the publishing power of the PI. Everybody is in the net of history here, everyone is from some school and has political association. What I am focusing on is people who get jobs, and that is because of them to a higher degree than average.

Say they get the next job because of that paper, or because of that expertise. Then they are the hot shit. People dont try to join them because they are too new. They dont have funding. But they are in a great position to run with the ball.

I have no idea what Im fucking talking about. Did piRNA's for instance get found and then run with by people like Hannon and Zamore? Usually found by others, but with two juggernauts out there how do you compete? Angle. You need an angle.